Three generations and a palace

In 634, Emperor Taizong, Li Shimin, began a residence intended for his father, Li Yuan. Li Yuan had founded the Tang dynasty and was now the retired emperor. The planned palace, first called Yong'an, occupied higher ground northeast of the older palace city. It was intended to offer the father relief from summer heat.

The name became Daming the following year. Li Yuan died in 635 at Da'an Palace, as the Old Book of Tang records. The residence planned for him acquired its greater role under another generation. The family's names can obscure that passage of time: the founder Li Yuan, his son Taizong and his grandson Li Zhi were three different men, each occupying a different place in the palace's history.

Li Zhi became Emperor Gaozong after Taizong's death. During 662–663 he enlarged the complex and brought imperial government into it. Sources connect his preference for its higher site with the damp conditions of the older Taiji Palace. At this stage Daming was also called Penglai Palace, a name associated with the pool within its grounds.

The expansion was an undertaking of government, not simply a household move. The Old Book of Tang records orders drawing on fifteen prefectures and deducting a month's salary from capital officials to help with the work. Behind the formal command lay the labour and materials of construction: earth for foundations, timber for halls, tiles, transport and skilled work. The chronicle exposes part of the burden required to make imperial architecture possible.

In 663 the new Hanyuan Hall entered use. The chronicle records Gaozong going to it that spring; the hall then became a setting for major imperial assemblies. This gave the family's new palace a public ceremonial role. A ruler's residence was also a place where office-holders and visiting delegations encountered the visible order of the court.

The complex continued north through Xuanzheng and Zichen, with further halls, offices and garden spaces beyond. A person admitted to one area did not automatically belong in all the others. The emperor's household and the machinery of rule occupied connected but differentiated spaces. Gaozong's expansion helped give this landscape the durable form that archaeology now traces.

Later rulers repaired, altered and used the palace. Its timber architecture eventually disappeared, while foundations, walls, roads and waterworks remained in the ground. Archaeological investigation beginning in the 1950s and subsequent excavation at gates, halls and the Taiye Pool gradually recovered their relationships.

Daming's history is therefore larger than the intentions of a single patron. A residence planned for a father, an administrative centre enlarged by a grandson, and a landscape repeatedly studied by archaeologists belong to the same place. From the preserved platform, the visitor can follow both the ambitions of the court and the practical work that supported them.